


An Apple Cleft In Two

by radondoran



Category: Monsters University (2013)
Genre: Gen, Homosexuality, Polycephaly, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 21:25:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radondoran/pseuds/radondoran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being fourteen brings more changes than Terry expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Apple Cleft In Two

When Terry and Terri were fourteen, they started noticing girls.

As far as changes went, this one wasn't earth-shattering. It didn't make any difference to everyday life, not really. They went out a couple of times with a couple of girls, and that was fun, but they'd agreed they weren't ready for a real girlfriend yet. Not that any girls probably would have wanted to date them anyway, but it was good to have these things established. Practically speaking, this was nothing more than a routine shift in perception.

If nothing else, it made art history class better. It was a boring subject anyway, and the teacher was so monotone that even Terri had trouble staying awake. The bright spot was that they sat just behind and to the right of Angela Urkasberg. She had the bluest hair and the bluest eyes (six of them) and the nicest smiles (two, side by side, very sharp) of any girl in school. Sure, from behind they could mostly only make out the hair, but it was soft and shiny and sometimes she'd toss it back or run a claw through it to smooth it. Occasionally she'd wear it pinned up all nice, and you could make out the way her dress showed off her first two shoulder joints.

Some days it seemed like Angela's presence was the only thing that made showing up to this class worthwhile, and today her desk was empty. Terry sighed and propped his head up with one elbow, bracing himself for forty-five minutes of unmitigated tedium. It wasn't until after he had his pencil out that he noticed he was smiling. Weird. He couldn't see Angela, but it felt like she was here. Maybe she'd moved desks and Terri could still see her; or maybe there was somebody else cute around.

Terry looked to their right, but the only monster there was Josh Gorsky, tilting back in his chair like always. Josh was your typical shallow, calculatedly-scruffy punk; Terry had never given him a second thought. As he started to look away, Josh turned around to face them.

"Hey dudes, can I borrow a pencil?" he whispered.

Terri immediately fumbled through a binder to hand him one, and their stomach seemed to do a flip. And as Josh said, "Thanks, man," and turned back to his desk, Terry realized he'd had it all wrong. They hadn't been noticing girls. _He_ had been noticing girls—and right now, Terri was noticing Josh. Terry felt sick.

Which meant that Terri felt sick too. He looked up inquiringly at his brother—and noticed Terry noticing him notice Josh. The sick feeling compounded as Terri's eye widened in horror. In a moment they were both so pale that the teacher asked no questions when Terry raised a hand for permission to leave.

They didn't ask one another where they were going. Probably they didn't know. They coordinated the routine walking motions without looking at one another and without speaking, agreed at least in the desire to get out of there, to flee. It must have been this that brought them down the math hallway towards the back parking lot, and out into the stinging sunlight and inconstant wind. Unthinkingly they followed an outside wall into a deep, windowless nook formed by the protruding corners of the gym and storeroom, and continued walking, only increasing their frantic haste as they paced back and forth on the dry grass. Their heartbeat was still going quick enough that it felt more like a constant thrum. They still hadn't met each other's eyes, and Terry could hear Terri's breathing beside him quick and ragged, as if he were fighting the impulse to sob.

The awful thing was, Terry couldn't quite catch his breath either. He stared hard at the ground before them and his mind whirled to match the quick writhing of each tentacle. He couldn't help it. What had happened just now was a shock, okay? It was weird and awkward and it threw everything into chaos. All that stuff that had seemed so routine before was totally shattered. They'd never get a date to homecoming now. And what if anybody at school found out? And what in hell were they going to say to Mother and Mom and Dad? He felt lost and afraid and overwhelmed—and above all hotly angry at himself, because if anybody had a right to be upset right now it was Terri and not him. God, he sucked! This sucked. Right now everything sucked.

His thoughts were momentarily drowned out by a renewed wave of nausea. The fresh air was doing nothing to calm them down. Terry was picking up on Terri's emotional reactions and it was fueling his own agitation, and his increased stress only boosted the adrenaline and sent everything back again, and so on in a positive feedback loop that was rapidly spinning out of control.

"Gotta calm down," Terry breathed, only half-aloud. He swallowed and turned to face Terri. "We need to calm down," he said, trying to sound authoritative. "Let's just—stand still and—"

Terri wouldn't meet his eye. He was breathing in quick, tremulous gulps, and when he shook his head it was unclear whether it was in reply to Terry or to his own troubled thoughts.

"Calm _down_ ," Terry repeated, more forcefully. "Look, you need to just stop for a second and—would you stop already?" he insisted as their pulse rate only seemed to climb. "Stand still—" He suited the action to the word and tried to stop short in the grass.

Terri did not stop, and the uneven momentum sent them into a clumsy half-pirouette that seemed certain to send them sprawling headslong on the ground. And then Terry moved forward to compensate, and the instinct of coordination kicked in again. They balanced with opposite hands, found solid ground again, and ended safely with their back against the cool brick wall.

But the near miss had brought back the palpitations and nausea in full force. Terry had to get this under control before it turned into a full-blown anxiety attack—if they weren't there already. Trying to force it wasn't going to help. He leaned his head back against the brick and concentrated first on controlling his own breathing. It took a couple of tries, but he managed a deep, slow breath in. It was difficult for the two of them to maintain radically different breathing rhythms; with any luck he would be able to pull Terri out of his current jagged one. Another breath. And out. It seemed that he could feel some of the tightness in their chest slackening.

"It's okay," he said aloud. A statement, not an order. "Terri. It's okay." He reached across and took each of Terri's hands in one of his, and they clasped hands close in front of their torso, like they always did when they were scared. Terri's breathing steadied, and their whirring pulse resolved itself into a powerful but slowing rhythm. Terry squeezed one of Terri's hands; the pressure was returned, and he felt secure in the mutual touch. If they could work themselves into a freak-out together, at least they shared comfort too.

At last Terri looked up, his face uncertain and desperate. Terry knew that he had to say something, that it must be his job to provide that reassurance. Twins though they were, people often seemed to think of Terry as the big brother—and if ever Terri needed him to fill that role, it was now. If only he knew where to start. He had only the vaguest idea of—of this as an abstract phenomenon; nothing in nine years of varied and extensive reading had prepared him to confront it so closely, so intimately. "It's okay," he said again. "Um—do—do you want to talk?"

Terry's eye darted at the brick wall opposite. "What for? You already got the idea. I... I'm..." He looked up into Terry's eye again and rushed out with the phrase as if it were a single word: "I'm pretty sure I'm gay."

 _Gay_. Terry realized he'd been waiting for Terri to say it first. He said, "There's nothing wrong with being gay."

Abruptly Terri withdrew his hands and closed them into fists. "Don't lie. You can't hide anything from me either. You"—and his breathing started to pick up again—"you think I'm disgusting."

"What?" This time the qualm in their stomach was pure guilt. "No! Terri, no. You have to believe me, you're my brother and I love you and nothing's gonna change that; it was just really—I was just surprised, okay? I didn't know!" And now it was his turn to break eye contact. "I didn't know."

Terri's hands relaxed and touched their counterparts again. "I... I wasn't sure either. Not for a long time. I thought I must be imagining things, that I'd snap out of it and start liking girls like you did. But I didn't. I don't think I'm gonna." He smiled sheepishly. "This kind of totally sucks."

"It's all right."

Terri rolled his eye. "Thanks, but no it isn't."

"Sure it is," Terry insisted, wishing he could offer something more helpful than blind assertions.

"Um, hello? Not really."

"Listen, everything's gonna be fine."

"Nuh-uh."

"Uh-huh," Terry countered automatically.

"Nuh-uh."

"Uh— hey!" he broke off, mirroring Terri's sudden smile.

Terri was practically laughing at him for having been pulled back so easily into the childish habits of yesteryear; now that they were allies again, it was amazing how readily his natural cheerfulness had reasserted itself. "You gotta admit it, though," he said, conversationally. "I've kind of screwed stuff up for us here. Like, seriously—we were kind of geeks anyway, but _nobody's_ gonna date us now."

Terry opened his mouth to reply—and then it hung open as something clicked in his brain that was almost more world-shaking than the revelation in the classroom had been. Slowly he said, "Maybe not. Maybe there'll be someb—some guy who wants to date _you_."

"Wait..." Comprehension dawned in Terri's eye as he tentatively followed the same train of thought. "What?"

"I'm such an idiot." Terry flung out his top hand in a frustrated _what gives?_ gesture. "God, Terri, I'm really sorry."

And now Terri did look confused. "What for?"

"I ignored you. I kept just assuming that I could speak for both of us. I've been acting like what I wanted was automatically the same as what we wanted, and I was wrong. I'm sorry," he repeated quietly. "I don't want to be like that."

"You're not like that," Terri assured him. "Hold up, though. Are you thinking what I'm thinking you were about to say you were thinking?"

Terry took half a second to parse the question, and then answered, "I think so. The thing is, we've been talking about dating as something we'd just automatically do together, but what if it doesn't have to be? I mean, yes," he replied to the obvious objection on Terri's tongue, "technically we're obviously going to be _together_. But that doesn't mean we can't be different. We do different things all the time, right?"

"Yeah... yeah. You really think we can date separately too?"

"Why not? I mean, sure, it'll probably be kind of, you know, incredibly complicated, but..."

"No problem!" said Terri, immediately confident. "I think you and me can handle complicated."

"True."

"Anyway," Terri went on, "we've got time to figure stuff out. I meant it when I said that we—that I didn't want to go steady right now."

"Cool," said Terry. Then: "Oh! For the record, I don't either."

"Cool. See? We've got plenty of time to figure out a system."

"Yeah. We can always talk more about this when we're ready. And Terri?" He hesitated. "Listen, I... You know you can always... You know we can talk about anything, right?"

"Uh-huh." He reached across their body and gripped Terry's arms just above the elbows. "Thanks."

Terry returned the hug, and when a chilly gust of wind whipped around the building into their corner, they folded both pairs of arms in a perfectly synchronized movement. "We should probably get back to class," said Terry after a few moments. "You ready to go in?"

"Yeah. Although honestly I'd rather keep playing hooky."

"Education," said Terry sternly, "is importa..." He couldn't even fake it. "Yeah, me too. But we can't just..."

"Aw, come on. If we hang out a few more minutes we can miss the rest of that boring lecture. We'll show up for lit class."

Terry thought about returning to the stuffy classroom and listening to a dull enumeration of names and dates and centuries-old pigment ingredients. He looked down at the bold reds and muted ochres of this year's first-fallen leaves, and up at the vivid azure of today's deep, clear sky. "All right."

He pushed one hand against the wall, and Terri intuitively followed the motion so that they stood upright together. "Hey, while we're out here," he said, "do you want to take me through Friday's jazz routine again? I'm still not really getting where the left steps fit in on that weird syncopated section."

"Of course!" Beaming, Terri held up a precise and confident hand to mark the downbeat. "Ready? A-one, and a-two, and——"

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks and apologies to abcooper, who was the first person from whom I heard this headcanon and who probably didn't intend for me to take it seriously.
> 
> The mention of Terri and Terry's parents is based on tumblr user paingineering's cute [momsters](http://paingineering.tumblr.com/post/54966965012) fanart.


End file.
